J.R.R. Tolkien's son was instrumental in cultivating his father's legacy, shepherding unpublished works to readers and helping extend the world of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. //

Christopher Tolkien, who for decades preserved and extended the beloved literary fantasies of his father, J.R.R. Tolkien, has died at the age of 95. The son's death, announced Thursday by the Tolkien Society, ends a distinguished career devoted to his father's legacy and the world he crafted in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

As the literary executor of the elder Tolkien's estate, Christopher edited and published a trove of works that had been left unfinished at the time of his father's death in 1973 — beginning in 1977 with The Silmarillion, a compendium of creation myths from Middle-earth, and continuing through the publication of the love story Beren and Lúthien in 2017. //

Christopher was an editor from the age of 5, catching inconsistencies in his father's bedtime tales, and was promised tuppence by his father for every mistake he noticed in The Hobbit," HarperCollins UK said in a statement released Thursday. //

He was also responsible for composing the original map of Middle-earth included with the The Lord of the Rings series when it was first published in the mid-1950s.